Today’s musicians prefer the fast lane, say labels

Classical music is getting faster. Or so say Deutsche Grammophon and Decca who, having compared recordings of JS Bach made in the 1960s with current ones, reveal that the former are around 30 per cent longer than the latter – the park in which maestros such as Otto Klemperer once took luxurious strolls is, it seems, now thronging with period instrument specialists such as Roger Norrington enjoying a high-octane work-out. Former Radio 3 controller Nicholas Kenyon puts it down to ‘a basic change in taste’, as listeners discard heavier styles of yore for ‘something more light, airy and flexible.’